The Last Lost Girl

by Maria Hoey

  She found a pen and some paper in a kitchen drawer. She scribbled a note for Marilyn, keeping it deliberately brief and she hoped, suitably accusatory:

  Marilyn, as you did not return and I needed to go out, I have taken Jimmy with me. Jacqueline Brennan

  She left it on the kitchen table, weighted down by Jimmy’s blue beaker. Then followed by Jimmy, she locked up the house.

  He found a book which he insisted on taking with him. “It’s my dinosaur book,” he said.

  “Oh alright then,” said Jacqueline, “but hurry up.”

  Magpie was waiting for them at the end of the drive, leaning against one of the gateposts, face upturned to the sky, eyes closed.

  “Sorry,” she said. “It took longer than I thought.”

  “Jesus wept,” said Magpie. He hunkered down. “Up you get.”

  Jimmy skipped forward and clambered up onto his shoulders.

  “Hold on tight now,” Magpie instructed the boy. “I’m just the horse, you’re the jockey.”

  And that was how they hurried down the hill to the town, Jimmy riding high on Magpie’s shoulders, arms looping his neck like pale ribbons.

  At the station Magpie stabbed at his pockets but Jacqueline said firmly, “You’re doing me a favour, this is on me” and he didn’t argue. She wondered how little money he had at his disposal and then she wondered what they were doing together, she and this man she did not know and this odd little child, setting off together on a journey.

  On the train, Jimmy sat next to Magpie and demanded of Jacqueline, “Where are my snacks?”

  “There aren’t any snacks,” said Jacqueline.

  “Marilyn brings snacks on the train.”

  “Does she? Well, I’m afraid I didn’t. If there’s a trolley, I could get you something … some biscuits or crisps?”

  “Sugar rots my teeth,” said Jimmy, “and crisps could make me choke. Marilyn brings rice cakes and grapes.”

  “Does she really?” Jacqueline was genuinely amazed.

  When the service trolley came around, she bought him an apple. Jimmy wanted it cut into pieces and Magpie took a Swiss Army knife from his pocket and did the honours, carefully and with great good humour.

  Half an hour into the journey, Jimmy suddenly slid down from his seat and came and stood beside her, his book in his outstretched hand.

  “Read it, please, Jacky Lean.”

  That’s a new one, thought Jacqueline, but it made her smile. Taken by surprise, she took the book from Jimmy and opened it to the first page. It was mostly pictures with very few words. She began: “‘A long, long, time ago a very lazy little dinosaur wished he did not have to –’”

  “Speak up!” said Jimmy. “I can’t hear you.”

  Jacqueline glanced up, conscious of listening strangers all around her. She met Magpie’s amused eyes, cleared her throat and started over again.

  “Again,” said Jimmy, as soon as she had finished.

  “You can’t want the same story twice in a row,” said Jacqueline.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Magpie. “I used to read the same story over and over again too. It was one about a mermaid.”

  Jimmy went back and climbed up next to Magpie again and said, “Tell me the story about the mermaid.”

  Jacqueline closed the book on her lap and grinned at Magpie. “You’re on.”

  Chapter 37

  1976

  In September, the weather is like a seesaw: first cool then warm, then cool then warm again. Up and down, up and down, as though summer cannot make up its mind whether to stay or go. Dublin beats Kerry in the All Ireland: Jacqueline thinks that at least someone’s prayer has been answered.

  In school, the classroom window shakes in the wind and when she moves her feet under her desk, Jacqueline’s new black patent shoes creak like a branch in a breeze. She’s in sixth class now and Miss Moore says they must work hard because secondary school is just around the corner.

  Regina Quinn’s desk is empty because she has been kept back a year.

  “It’s because she’s thick,” says Maria O’Brien, and the other girls snigger.

  “She’s not thick,” says Jacqueline. “She’s just taking her time.” It is not what she meant to say, but she feels the need to defend Regina and it shuts people up.

  Miss Moore has long straight shiny black hair and eyes the colour of chocolate buttons and Jacqueline would like to please her. But sometimes in the middle of a lesson, when Miss Moore is talking about Cúchulainn or the rivers of Ireland or long division, Jacqueline suddenly thinks about Lilly. Then she can see her sister moving toward her under the apple trees, her pink toenails coming closer and closer and suddenly it is as though a jar of humming and buzzing flying things has spilled open inside her head.

  Miss Moore asks Jacqueline to stay behind at lunch one day. She asks Jacqueline how she is feeling and Jacqueline says she is feeling fine. She gives Jacqueline a copybook with a hardback silver cover: it looks like Christmas tinsel and it is the nicest copybook Jacqueline has ever owned. Miss Moore tells Jacqueline she has a gift with words and that maybe she would like to write down the things she is feeling in the silver copybook. Writing about how you are feeling, Miss Moore says, can sometimes make you feel better and nobody, she tells Jacqueline, need ever see what is in the copybook but Jacqueline herself. She does not say anything about Lilly, but Jacqueline knows she is thinking about her. Everyone is always thinking about Lilly.

  The first thing Jacqueline writes about in the silver copybook is the dream she keeps having about Lilly. She is washing Lilly’s hair. Lilly is leaning over the bath and Jacqueline is rubbing in the shampoo – it smells of lemons and makes a lot of suds. Suddenly Jacqueline pushes Lilly’s head under the water and holds her there. Lilly struggles and struggles but she cannot get away from Jacqueline’s hands. The water runs black, Lilly’s head shrinks to the size of Jacqueline’s fist, then it snaps like a piece of thin soap and dissolves like a bath cube. Jacqueline watches it gurgling down the plughole.

  Writing the dream down does not make Jacqueline feel better at all.

  In the playground, girls whisper and stop when Jacqueline comes near.

  She hears a girl saying, “That’s her – it was her sister that disappeared.”

  At the turn-off for Beechlawns, Jacqueline says goodbye to Regina Quinn and looks for Daddy. She cannot see him yet, but she knows he will be waiting for her at the top of the hill. He never says it, but Jacqueline knows he does not like her or Gayle to walk anywhere on their own anymore. He would, she knows, like to pick her up at the school gate if she let him, but Jacqueline remembers what Lilly used to say, “Only posh girls and babies get collected from school instead of walking home with their friends.”

  Halfway up the hill, she sees Daddy waving to her and she waves back.

  A car goes by with the windows wide open and the radio blaring “Dancing Queen”. Jacqueline is reminded of Lilly’s radio. When she comes to stand beside him, Daddy does not turn around. He is leaning on a gate staring at something in the cornfield even though there is nothing to see – no golden corn waving in the wind, only stubble and some crows picking over the ground. Jacqueline thinks he must be looking at the poppies.

  “I like them too, Daddy,” she says. “They’re my favourite flowers.”

  Daddy turns. “What’s that, love?”

  “I was just saying that I like poppies too.”

  Daddy turns away again and looks at the field. “They say poppies thrive in disturbed soil.”

  Jacqueline does not really know what he means, but a cold feeling comes over her and suddenly more than anything in the world she wants Daddy to look at her and not at the flowers in the cornfield.

  “Are you coming home, Daddy?” she says, but he just stands looking at the field as though he has forgotten she is even there. “Daddy,” she says again, but he pays no attention.

  She tries to think of something to do or say to make him notice her. She looks around
her – there is nothing. She bends down and picks up a stone. She sniffs it and holds it out.

  “Smell that, Daddy,” she says. “I bet you didn’t know that a stone has a smell?”

  Daddy looks around and down at the stone in Jacqueline’s hand. “Go on ahead, pet,” he says. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  Jacqueline lets the stone fall to the ground. She walks away, turning every few minutes to see if he is following her, but Daddy is still standing where she left him.

  In Blackberry Lane, her feet kick up a dust cloud that takes the shine off her new patent-leather shoes. She notices things, things she has seen many, many times but has not stopped to think about before. Like the dark corners where the sun does not reach, the way the ditches are choked with nettles and how the trees meet and block out the light. She stops at the gap in the hedge for the buttercup field and waits in the band of sunlight for Daddy to catch her up. He does not come and Jacqueline walks home alone.

  She lets herself in at the back door. Her mother is sitting at the kitchen table stirring tea in a blue mug. When Jacqueline comes in, her mother stops stirring and looks up quickly.

  “Oh, is it that time?” she says.

  What it sounds like to Jacqueline is “Oh, it’s only you.”

  Her mother begins stirring again. She has dressed herself today, but her hair looks like it has not been brushed. A thought comes into Jacqueline’s head: she could brush her mother’s hair for her. She imagines herself going upstairs to her parents’ room. She sees herself walking to the cream wood dressing table, she can even see her own reflection in the hanging mirror that tilts forward or backward until it is just the way you want it. She reaches out and picks up her mother’s hairbrush – it has a white handle and a big flat back with a painted-on bunch of pink and yellow roses. When she turns it over, Jacqueline can see a little fuzzy tangle of her mother’s dark hair caught in the black plastic teeth of the brush. She sees herself coming down the stairs with the brush in her hand, sees herself coming up behind her mother very quietly and, without saying anything, beginning to brush her mother’s hair. Long, slow, strokes. She is very gentle so as not to snag the brush on any knots, so as not to hurt her mother.

  “What’s for the dinner?” asks Jacqueline.

  Her mother looks up again. “Are you hungry?” she asks. She sounds surprised. “I could make you something …” She looks at the press as though she is trying to think of the names of things that people like to eat – she hardly ever eats anymore – she mostly just drinks tea.

  “It doesn’t matter,” says Jacqueline. “I’ll wait until Daddy comes in.”

  “Good girl.” Her mother begins stirring again.

  Jacqueline goes into the sitting room and switches on the television. She sits on the sofa and stares at the screen. The Smash advertisement comes on – the one that always makes Jacqueline laugh. The aliens look like they have been made out of tin cans and they make fun of humans: “They are clearly a most primitive people.”

  Jacqueline does not even smile.

  Near the end of September, the weather changes again. The days are hot and sunny as though summer has come once more. Jacqueline wakes one night, sure that something in particular has disturbed her. She kneels up in bed, pulls back the curtain, and presses her face to the cool window glass. She picks out the shape of the magnolia flowers, but there is nothing else to see. She sits back down in bed and listens to Gayle making funny little noises in her sleep. Jacqueline is thirsty so she gets out of bed quietly and goes downstairs to the kitchen. She takes a glass from the press and turns on the tap. When she looks up she sees something through the window – a flash of blue and something moving among the trees in the orchard. She puts the glass down in the sink and turns off the water.

  She runs into the hall, calling, “Daddy, Daddy, there’s somebody in the orchard! I think it might be Lilly!”

  She waits until she hears footsteps overhead before running back to the kitchen. Before she has the back door unbolted, they are all behind her and then they are in the garden, the four of them, running across the damp grass.

  Jacqueline’s mother is shouting, “Lilly, Lilly! Where are you, Lilly?”

  It is not Lilly, just some boys stealing apples. One of them is slower than the others, who by the time Jacqueline reaches the orchard have all disappeared through the gap in the hedge. The boy who is left behind turns and Jacqueline sees his terrified eyes caught in the light from Daddy’s torch. Apples tumble as he runs and there is a last flash of his blue T-shirt before he too disappears.

  Afterwards, Jacqueline’s mother will not come inside. She moves around under the apple trees in her white nightdress, calling Lilly’s name. She is still calling it when, between the three of them, they drag her inside the house. When she gets away from them, she runs upstairs to Lilly’s room and curls up on the bed. They try to coax her back to her own room, as if she were a little girl, but she claws at the blankets on Lilly’s bed and makes a noise in her throat that starts out quiet but ends up as a scream.

  Daddy has to call the doctor and Dr May comes and gives Jacqueline’s mother something to make her sleep. She sleeps in Lilly’s bed all night and most of the following day. Before she wakes up, Daddy has already taken an axe and hacked the branches from every single apple tree.

  Chapter 38

  Afterwards

  As soon as they stepped from the train, Jimmy said he needed the toilet.

  Magpie looked at Jacqueline, “Right, I’ll leave you to it and go see if I can find Dawn.”

  “Can’t you wait for us?” said Jacqueline. “We’ll only be a few minutes?”

  But Magpie is already moving away. “Best if I see her on her own first. I’ll meet you on the pier in half an hour.”

  Jacqueline watched him go and Jimmy tugged at her hand.

  “I need to go to the bathroom NOW.”

  She took him to Burger King. In the women’s toilet a small queue of people were waiting but when Jimmy began jigging on the spot the woman ahead of her insisted they take her place in the queue. When their turn came, she hesitated again. Did she go with the child into the cubicle and how much could he do for himself and how much was she expected to do for him? While she was deciding, Jimmy pushed in ahead of her and slammed the cubicle door in her face.

  “Let me know if you need any help,” Jacqueline told the door.

  “I’m able to do it myself!” roared Jimmy.

  “Glad to hear it,” said Jacqueline, and when she turned every woman in the queue was smiling at her. They think I’m his doting mother, thought Jacqueline.

  Jimmy reappeared with his clothes awry and his glasses in his hands. Without them, his face looked unguarded and somehow vulnerable. No longer magnified by the thick lenses, his eyes seemed softer too.

  “They fell off,” he said, handing them to Jacqueline, “and I stood on them.”

  “Are they broken?” Jacqueline inspected them. “Ah feck it, yes, they are. Can you see without them?”

  Jimmy nodded.

  “Good lad, now you wash your hands and I’ll wrap these in some tissue and put them in my bag until we get back.”

  The hand-washing ritual seemed to take forever.

  Magpie kept them waiting. Jacqueline sat on a bench on the pier while Jimmy raced backwards and forwards making some sort of flying noises. It was he who spotted Magpie at last and he ran to him, yelling in delight. Jacqueline watched as the man swooped the boy up in his arms and swung him overhead.

  “Well?” she said, as Magpie approached. She thought she could smell alcohol on his breath.

  “She’s not happy about it, but she’s agreed to meet you.”

  “That’s great. When are we meeting?”

  “Not now, she’s working. She’ll meet us when her shift is over.”

  “When is that?”

  “Six o’clock.”

  “Six o’clock! But that’s hours away! Does she not have a lunch break or something sooner than tha
t?”

  “Beggars can’t be choosers – it’s six o’clock or nothing.”

  “Fine, but what are we going to do for the next six hours?”

  “Dinosaurs!” yelled Jimmy. “Can I have one, please?”

  Jacqueline looked where he was pointing at a girl selling foil helium balloons on the pier.

  “I suppose so.”

  She reached for her bag, but Magpie was already rummaging in his jacket pocket.

  “I’ll get this one.”

  They walked over to the girl and Magpie handed over the money. “I’ll take that nice pretty pink one – Snow White, is it?”

  Jacqueline watched Jimmy’s face fall.

  “What’s up? You don’t like Snow White?” Magpie asked.

  Jimmy shook her head.

  “How about Cinderella then? No?” Magpie winked at the girl. “Give him the dinosaur there, will you?”

  Jimmy watched, avid-eyed, as the girl freed a garish balloon emblazoned with an unlikely orange dinosaur against a backdrop of an erupting volcano. He took the string in both hands and stared up beatifically at the balloon sailing above his head.

  They walked the length of the pier, the boy with the balloon between them. We must look like a family, Jacqueline thought. A crowd of young girls came toward them, dressed in short shorts and skimpy floral skirts. They passed, trailing a scent of floral perfumes and she saw Magpie give them the once-over.

  He caught her watching and grinned. “A rage of maidens,” he said.

  Later, on the beach, he bent down and wrestled the shoes from his feet. He was sockless and his feet were pink and clean-looking, the way Jacqueline remembered them when he had first spoken to her on the beach.

  “Can I take my sandals off, Jacky Lean?” said Jimmy.

  Jacqueline nodded and he sat down on the sand and let her unbuckle his sandals, then he leapt up and raced away across the beach, roaring ferociously, the balloon in his wake.

  Watching him, Magpie said, “I don’t get this fascination with dinosaurs. Dinosaurs and vampires – that’s all the young care about nowadays.” He dropped down and stretched himself out on the sand.